itch.io

Absolutely love the game! This is just a minor thing, but when I went through the door and was requested to place the first stone into the mural I noticed that I could walk through some bushes to the left and simply get around the people blocking the way. After connecting to the main network in there (Daedalus I think) the stone disappeared from the ground, with the mural still not having it in place. Later on (after placing the pink and yellow stones) the mural was completely filled in, despite me never placing the stone. Just a little continuity thing I found

Love the game! I just have a few suggestions:

First of all, I found a pretty easily fixable issue about movement. It seems like the player's movement vectors aren't being normalized, resulting in the player moving faster when running diagonally and even faster than that when jumping at the same time. I was able to abuse this to just skip through the Pit of Pain level without firing a single shot or taking a single hit from an enemy. 

On the topic of the Pit of Pain level though, I found it to be rather unbalanced. Taking the left path from the start along the top (as I did) left me starved for ammo, and having to melee by the time I reached the bottom. Even when I used my shots as efficiently as possible (that is, only using the minimum number of shots per enemy) I still found myself critically low on ammo by that time. I think this could be fixed by making the level more linear, making it so the player can't take the left path and has to go to the right. While this might take away from the openness of it a little, I think it would improve gameplay as there are plenty of branches to the pit along the path to the right.

There are also some changes to the gameplay that I would like to suggest: 

First, I would make it so that when the player shoots one enemy, the ones around it are alerted as well. It's easy to play the game as a stealth shooter rather than a run-and-gun DOOM or Quake style game, picking enemies off one-by-one. 

Something else which I feel kind of slowed things down a bit was having to switch to a separate melee weapon. The sword felt a bit awkward as the only melee option, since it takes time to switch to it that could be spent shooting. I think that it would feel more natural if there was also something like a punch that you're able to perform while holding guns. It could deal low damage and be more focused on knockback (similar to Left 4 Dead), so that way there's something to fall back on if the player gets surrounded by enemies. Also, punching a demon to the ground before blowing its brains out with a shotgun is really satisfying!

I think the rage mechanic is a bit underutilized as well. I think that a system like that should feel as good as possible to play. Instead of just speeding the player's movement up, a solution could be to also increase the player's rate of fire. It could also lead to the player bringing out a chainsaw or something while giving a speed boost to annihilate enemies that stand in their way (but still be vulnerable to damage, especially from ranged weapons). I think that adding either of these would dramatically improve the rage mechanic.

Finally, I found the explosions to be a bit lackluster. The explosion radius is rather small, making it not as effective for large crowds as it could be. A solution to this (without making explosives overpowered) could be to have a "core" to the explosion as well as an outer boundary to it, kind of like a shockwave. The core could deal full damage, and the explosion could deal less damage the farther away from the core it is until it finally drops to zero at the outer boundary. This would make it so that shooting a pipe bomb into a crowd feels more effective, even if most of them don't drop dead on the spot. 

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Regardless of the suggestions though, I had a great time playing this game, and can't wait to see more!

I absolutely loved this game! I do have a couple of minor gripes with it though. 

Gameplay: 

First, the walking was rather clunky, often forcing me in a straight line when I attempted to turn. The flashlight running animation played when I just held down shift, even without moving. Turning the flashlight on in general was rather annoying, with it staying pointed down and to the left for around a second or so. This animation could be interrupted though if I very slightly sprint, putting it into the sprinting animation which returns to normal quicker.

The "find the exit" minigame was a bit frustrating, considering the amount of dead-ends, and by the time I became good enough at it to avoid the enemy, it lost its scariness.

The parkour minigame was more frustrating than scary. At one point I got stuck on the side of a ledge where it looked like I could step up it, resulting in me falling off. 

Scares:

I didn't encounter all the scares, but here are a couple that I did find ineffective. 

As mentioned previously, the "find the exit" minigame lost its scariness after a bit, and playing it twice lets you know what to expect. 

I found the losing screen at the end of the parkour minigame to be rather bland. Losing in that style of game in general isn't exactly scary, since you know that you're going to lose. The timer in the parkour minigame also took away the sense of urgency present in the other minigames. I think it would be much more frightening if something was chasing you down the tunnel. Something large would really create a sense of claustrophobia in the confines of the cavern. The thing could even move slightly faster than the player, nearly catching up only to be held back by a particularly small section of tunnel that it must burst through, buying the player some extra time.

With those aside, there are many things this game does fantastically. 

Gameplay: 

The detailed environments help to really increase the immersion. The audio design is amazing, and the story is intriguing. 

I especially enjoyed the "close the doors" and "follow the light" minigames. These were incredibly nerve-wracking, and had me more frightened than any other part of the game. These two were extremely well made. 

Scares: 

Opening my eyes to see the creature outside the window nearly gave me a heart-attack. The anticipation of not knowing what will be there upon opening my eyes seriously helped to set the mood. 

The sense of panic from the "close the doors" and "follow the light" minigames was phenomenal. Forcing me to concentrate and observe what happened around me, before jolting into action set me on edge like nothing else. 

I will definitely check out the early access on Steam, and look forward to where you will go from here!

Fantastic game! The environment was very immersive, with lighting and shading fitting the story perfectly. The narrative was superb, having complexities not seen in most other games. 

That said, I did find a couple of bugs in it. First, I ran into a bug when re-entering room 203. The door opened half way, closed, and wouldn't open again. I didn't encounter this again when I restarted the game. 

The second bug is in the bathroom of room 204(?). In between the sink and the bathtub, there is a section of wall that doesn't have collision, allowing the player to walk through it and fall out of the world. This forced me to restart the game as well. 

Some minor nitpicks I have as well are that the crosshair dot was abnormally large and that there were no mouse/keybind options that I was able to find. 

I also messed around with the camera a lot on my first playthrough, causing me to unknowingly run out of camera paper. I feel as though limited paper is best suited for a survival game, and that being able to take as many pictures as you want would be better here. It would also be nice if there was an option to save the pictures taken (say, to a gallery/photobook that the character carries around or pinned up on a wall in a side menu). 

All of these minor suggestions aside, this was a phenomenal game. I greatly look forward to what you make next!

Haha thanks for the update. I'm fine with waiting for the next update. Good luck with future development!

I've tried reloading it a couple times from different saves. On my way back from retrieving the item (when Nao collapses and movement is slowed), I can pass through the door after the first chessboard, but not the second. I have tried everything I can think of, but it's acting as if it's just a wall. I noticed this glitch in the blacksmith's building on the same mission as well. I was unable to exit the room after looting it, and I had to restore from one of my previous saves. Is there any way to get around this one room? If I'm the only one having this problem, I would be fine with just using a cheat or something to bypass this.

The stealth mission that you can go on with Nao is impossible to complete. After navigating both of the chessboard on your way back, you can't pass through the door to leave the basement. The arrow leading out doesn't actually lead to anything other than a wall. This is a game-breaking bug, leaving me trapped in the basement chessroom